Prime Minister António Costa said on Tuesday that “the biggest structural change” in education since he led the government was the reduction in early school leaving from “12% to almost 5%”.
“The biggest structural change I’ve seen in the nearly seven years I’ve been Prime Minister is that we’ve managed to reduce early school leaving from 12% to almost 5%.”emphasized the head of government in Évora.
António Costa spoke at a ceremony marking the start of the new school year, in Escola Secundária Gabriel Pereira, in the city of Alentejo, in the company of the Minister of Education, João Costa, and the Secretary of State for Education, António Leite.
Prior to the ceremony, the Prime Minister, accompanied by the director of the Gabriel Pereira School Group (AEGP), Fernando Farinha Martins, toured some areas of the school’s headquarters and spoke with students and teachers.
Given that the reduction in early school leaving is due to “several factors”, the Prime Minister pointed out that one of them was “there is an increasing social awareness that it is essential for everyone to make themselves essential to invest in education.” “.
It was of course also the result of the families having better living conditions, but it was the result of another fundamental thing, which is that the school has transformed itself and is becoming more attractive and diverse,” he continued.
With this transformation, António Costa emphasized, it was possible for the school “for every time… [mais haver] greater diversity of young people and children in relation to their path”.
“We don’t all like the same thing and that’s why the school needs to have this ability to motivate and mobilize everyone, because everyone needs to have access to education and society needs everyone to have the best possible level of education,” he stresses.
In his speech, the head of government wished “the entire educational community good luck” and left a special wish: “May life help us so that the whole school year can continue with hand hygiene, but without wearing masks”.
After finishing his speech, António Costa went back to “say a last word” and “wish two freshmen a very good school year, one as Secretary of State for Education, the other as Minister of Education”.
“It’s your first year of college so don’t let that fool you and that these first of the next four years of college are going really well,” he said.
The director of the AEGP, Fernando Farinha Martins, presented in his speech the group and some of the projects he is involved in and revealed that the schools integrating it “will start the school year with all teachers”.
AEGP has 2,000 students, 286 teachers, 116 operational assistants, 13 technical assistants and 10 senior technicians, spanning various cycles from preschool to adult education and training.
Decentralization of competences as a silent revolution in education
António Costa also thought about the decentralization of competences in education, which “takes a new step this year”, “the third pillar” of the “silent revolution” that is taking place in this field.
The head of government said he had witnessed the “silent presentation of two of the great revolutions that have taken place in schools in recent years”.
“And they don’t register as major reforms because we have become accustomed to the sad idea that major reforms bring a lot of noise, a lot of protest and a lot of pain,” he continued.
But, according to the prime minister, “truly good reforms are those that mobilize their participants, in which people commit to this transformation and in which transformation really takes place, almost without [se] give for it”.
These “two silent revolutions”, as António Costa called them, were “curricular flexibility and school autonomy”.
“These two silent revolutions are in fact a structural reform in our school and the school today is a very different school”, not only “from the one I attended 45 years ago”, but from the one that existed in Portugal “very a few years ago”. , where there was no such autonomy, where there was no flexibility,” he emphasized.
And now “this anchoring in the area means that there is a third pillar of this revolution, which will take another step this year”, namely the decentralization of educational powers from the central administration to the municipalities, he emphasized.
It’s a “difficult step,” Costa admitted, recalling his past as mayor: “I was mayor for eight years and I haven’t forgotten what I learned”.
But this “is an essential step to take as it completes this tripod of autonomy, flexibility and decentralization,” he argued.
The head of government, accompanied by the Minister of Education, João Costa, recalled that “in the beginning flexibility” [curricular] it wasn’t easy either and now it’s almost like [dado] acquired. Decentralization is not easy, but it will also be taken for granted.”
As long as “we all have perseverance, patience, understanding and above all a spirit of dialogue with each other so that we can overcome these problems,” he defended.
And it is necessary to “continue, because the school must enrich itself in this diversity,” the prime minister said in the speech at the ceremony.
Source: DN
